Jul 2, 2014

If you're an avid Microsoft Office user and you'd like to try out future versions of the productivity suite, here's something that shall be really good news for you.

Redmond has launched a new beta program for Office that allows users to try out pre-release versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, and Access before they hit the market in stable form. As TechRadar reports, while the service is completely free of charge and is available for both users and companies, the company still expects participants to send feedback and help its own developing team improve these products in order to provide better stability and features when they are released to users. “The Office team at Microsoft is looking for participants to join us in pre-release beta programs! Your feedback in these programs will be instrumental in building the best productivity software and services available. The programs will span across the full family of Microsoft Office client, server and cloud services. The family of products include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Visio, Access, Publisher and Outlook applications, as well as the Exchange, SharePoint and Project server products and cloud services,” the company says in the description of the program.

“If you or the company you work for, or both, are interested in providing feedback to shape and enhance the latest and greatest technologies in the world, then we'd like to know more about you.” Microsoft is preparing some pretty exciting products for Office users, including a touch-optimized version that's specifically designed for Windows 8 devices. Basically, this new version would enable Windows 8 adopters to create and edit documents right in the Modern UI of their devices, which according to people close to the development plans, is a very important step towards a broader strategy that also includes Windows 9.

The next Windows operating is believed to be dumping the desktop on ARM tablets, but instead would include a touch-optimized version of Office, thus giving buyers the power to work with documents even though they do not have a desktop. Words, Excel, and PowerPoint are the first apps to arrive in the touch-optimized UI of Windows 8 and Microsoft already previewed the presentation app at the BUILD developer conference in April. There are no release dates available right now, but sources said that Microsoft could launch Office for Windows 8 later this year, most likely after the Android build officially gets to see daylight.

Office is expected to get major improvements in future versionsImage credits to ArsTechnica